Riyadh, 27 October 2025
Saudi Arabia-based talent platform Squadio has closed a US $3 million (≈ SAR 11 million) Pre-Series A round to accelerate its AI-driven remote hiring platform across the MENA region and beyond.
Founded in 2019 by Khaled Senawy, Squadio enables companies to build remote-first tech teams by connecting them with vetted engineers, designers, and product managers from across the globe. The platform reportedly hosts over 55,000 tech professionals from more than 80 countries, and has worked with over 450 companies in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and the US.
The investors in this round include Wa’ed Ventures, 500 Sanabil MENA, Nour Nouf Ventures, SEEDRA Ventures and the National Technology Development Program (NTDP).
With this funding, Squadio says it will deepen its AI matching technology, expand its geographic footprint into Africa and Silicon Valley, and strengthen partnerships with organisations to support remote tech team build-outs.
Why this is important:
- It signals strong investor interest in talent-infrastructure and remote workforce platforms in Saudi Arabia and the broader MENA region.
- The remote/hybrid workforce trend and AI-enabled talent matching are key inflection points for tech adoption in the region.
- For global companies looking to build engineering/design teams more flexibly, MENA-based platforms like Squadio are emerging as viable partners.
- For startups and scale-ups in the region, the presence of such platforms lowers the barrier to accessing global tech talent, while staying locally anchored.
Editorial Team Note
At Startups MENA, we’re excited to see Saudi-born platforms like Squadio making bold moves on the global stage. Their raise is more than a funding milestone — it reflects a shift in narrative, where MENA is not just a market to access talent from, but a place to build and scale global talent-technology infrastructure. We’ll be watching closely how they grow the matching engine and what this means for talent flow across MENA, Africa and beyond.
